Conservative women “more attractive”? How patriarchal of you!

Last night, I read a blog post by Libby Anne which reminded me of something I’ve been hearing lately: the concept that conservative women are just automatically “more attractive” than liberal ones.  As in, a liberal might be good-looking, but the conservatives are drop-dead gorgeous.   From that blog post:

Notreally: Good for you, fire, that Sancty can never be serious. I mean how can a liberal be drop-dead gorgeous? Beautiful, maybe, but not gorgeous, only conservatives can be gorgeous.

Farris’ use of the word “liberal” reminds me of how I saw it used growing up in a conservative community. This fixation on liberals not being able to be actually physically attractive—not like conservatives—is getting repetitive.

Not only does this have entirely no basis in fact–our political beliefs have zero to do with the genes which make up our appearance–but it is very patriarchal.

I wonder if this is why the Left Behind books portrayed Verna Zee–the token liberal who gets terribly abused in those books–as wearing “sensible shoes.”  Because apparently, taking good care of your feet is unattractive, so only libs would do it.

Today, last night’s blog post clicked in my head, bringing back to mind a comment the ex-friend Richard once made on his Facebook years ago.  In those days (and probably still now), he was into the new Tea Party and anarchism.  A woman on his Facebook posted something agreeing with these viewpoints.  He replied that many men would find her views very attractive (I can’t give you an exact quote).

That response bugged me.  A lot.  But now I know exactly WHY it bothered me:

Because you have here a man telling a woman that her political views make her “attractive” to men.

Because they are man-approved.

Because liberal views make you unattractive to men.

Because this is obviously the most important thing: not why a woman has those views, but whether or not they make her sexy.

In other words, you have here a man telling a woman how to think.

Richard used to do that to me a lot, too, trying to tell me how to think about everything from my church not being “Orthodox” enough, to wifely submission, to spanking or screaming at or swacking children, to whether or not I have NVLD, to how I should react to being sexually harassed.

And exactly why did he think it was his business to tell me, to scold me when I didn’t agree?  Obviously because of his patriarchal attitudes.

It reminds me of the attitudes I describe here, men telling a young girl in the 1950s whether she should become an engineer or a housewife, rather than letting her use her own brain and make up her own mind.

Geez, I’m so much better off without this guy hanging around anymore.  How was I so blind?  Must’ve been the spell narcissists put you under.  (And yes, he really did hypnotize me, according to him.)

But yeah, this idea that a woman’s “hotness” relates to her political views?

SO not attractive.